Bude

A section of Bude's coast which is located between Compass Cove to the south and Furzey Cove to the north, is a SSSI (Site of Special Scientific Interest) noted for its geological and biological interest.[7] Carboniferous sandstone cliffs surround Bude. During the Variscan Orogeny the strata were heavily faulted and folded. As the sands and cliffs around Bude contain calcium carbonate (a natural fertiliser), farmers used to take sand from the beach, for spreading on their fields. The cliffs around Bude are the only ones in Cornwall that are made of Carboniferous sandstone, as most of the Cornish coast is formed of Devonian slate, granite and Precambrian metamorphic rocks.[7] The stratified cliffs of Bude give their name to a sequence of rocks called the Bude Formation. Many formations can be viewed from the South West Coast Path which passes through the town.

Many ships have been wrecked on the jagged reefs which fringe the base of the cliffs. The figurehead of one of these, the Bencoolen, a barque whose wrecking in 1862 resulted in the drowning of most of the crew, was preserved in the churchyard but was transferred to the town museum to save it from further decay.[8][9] The aftermath of the wreck of the Bencoolen was described by Robert Stephen Hawker in letters which were published in Hawker's Poetical Works (1879).[10]

Like the rest of the British Isles and South West England, Bude experiences a maritime climate with cool summers and mild winters. Temperature extremes at the Met Office weather station at Bude range from −11.1 °C (12.0 °F) during February 1969[11] to 36.0 °C (96.8 °F) in July 2022.[12] The Met Office recorded Bude as the sunniest place in the United Kingdom during the summer of 2013 with 783 hours of sunlight.[13]

The Haven, the Atlantic Ocean and the beach at Bude

Bude became popular in Victorian times for sea bathing, inspired by the Romantic movement. The ladies used Crooklets Beach while the gentlemen were segregated to Summerleaze. Workers flocked to Bude for the building of the canal, but as shipping dwindled, and the railway reached dominance, Bude concentrated on the emergent tourist trade. By 1926, there were 59 boarding houses and 5 hotels: the Falcon, Grenville, Globe, Norfolk and the Commercial.

View of the beach in Bude and the canal coming to an end as it reaches the sea lock (on left of image)

The sea lock on Bude Canal

Bude Sea Pool

There are a number of good beaches in the Bude area, many of which offer good surfing conditions and many of which are dog-friendly.[20] Bude was the founder club in British Surf Life Saving.

• Summerleaze, Crooklets and 'middle' beach, are all within the town;
• Widemouth Bay is a few miles south of the town and offers a long, wide sandy beach;
• Sandymouth Beach is owned by the National Trust, and has spectacular cliffs and rock formations with shingle below the cliffs and a large expanse of sand at low tide. There are also a number of other coves and beaches to be found and explored in the local area.

In the 18th century there was a small unprotected tidal harbour at Bude. The Bude Canal Company built a canal and improved the harbour. Around twenty small boats use the tidal moorings of the original harbour during the summer months. Most are sport fishermen, but there is also some small-scale, semi-commercial, fishing for crab and lobster.

There is a wharf on the Bude Canal about half a mile from the sea lock that links the canal to the tidal haven. This can be opened only at or near high tide, and then only when sea conditions allow. North Cornwall District Council administered the canal, harbour and lock gates until its abolition in March 2009.[21] These gates were renewed after the originals were damaged in a storm in 2008. They are the only manually operated sea lock gates in England. The pier head by the locks is a Grade II listed structure.

The canal is one of the few of note in south-west England. Its original purpose was to take small tub boats of mineral-rich sand from the beaches at Bude and carry them inland for agricultural use on fields. A series of inclined planes carried the boats over 400 vertical feet (120 m) to Red Post, where the canal branched south along the upper Tamar Valley towards Launceston east to Holsworthy and north to the Tamar Lakes, that fed the canal. The enterprise was always in financial difficulty, but it carried considerable volumes of sand and also coal from south Wales. The arrival of the railway at Holsworthy and the production of cheap manufactured fertiliser undermined the canal's commercial purpose, and it was closed down and sold to the district municipal water company. However the wharf area and harbour enjoyed longer success, and coastal sailing ships carried grain across to Wales and coal back to Cornwall.

Bude Castle

Notable buildings include the parish church of St Michael and All Angels, built in 1835 and enlarged in 1876 (the architect was George Wightwick), Ebbingford Manor,[22] and the town's oldest house, Quay Cottage in the centre of town. Bude Castle was built about 1830 on sand on a concrete raft for Victorian inventor Sir Goldsworthy Gurney and is now a heritage centre.[23] Gurney also invented the Bude Light.

At the northernmost point of Efford Down Farm, overlooking Summerleaze Beach and the breakwater, a former coastguard lookout stands. Known as Compass Point and built by the Acland family in 1840 of local sandstone, it is based on the Temple of Winds in Athens. It was moved to its current position in 1880 and again in 2023 to protect it from collapse due to cliff erosion. It is so called as it has points of the compass carved in each of its octagonal sides.[24]

In 1953, Bude became home to the first Surf Life Saving Club, in the UK, while the popular lido Bude Sea Pool opened in 1930. This was previously administered by Cornwall Council but lost public funding in 2010/11. The Friends of Bude Sea Pool was created in 2011 to secure its future.

In 2018, the "Bude Tunnel", a 70-metre (80 yard) Perspex walkway at the Bude Sainsbury's supermarket site was mentioned in the national press after becoming the town's top-rated attraction on TripAdvisor.[25] The popularity caused TripAdvisor to temporarily suspend all reviews for the Bude Tunnel, citing a number of reviews that "do not describe a first-hand experience".[26]

In 2021, Bude hosted the Gorsedh Kernow (a festival of Cornish culture and bardic ceremony) as it did in 1961, 1975, and 1993. The festival was scheduled to take place in 2020, but has been postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.[27]

There have been Cornish wrestling tournaments, for prizes, in Bude for at least a couple of centuries.[32][33] Venues for tournaments included: the Castle grounds,[34] Broadclose Hill[35] and the Football ground.[36]

See also Cornish wrestling in Poughill.